Cosplay, short for costume play, is a type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character, or idea. Characters are often drawn from popular fiction in Japan, but recent trends have included American cartoons and science fiction.

Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture centered around role play. A broader use of the term cosplay applies to any costumed role play in venues apart from the stage, regardless of the cultural context.

Informational text cited from Wikipedia.org.

For the rest of the week, I would love to do enough featurettes to cover the entire alphabet, and hopefully help educate about interesting animes, mangas, terms and events which happen all around in the world of Cosplay!

D is for Dealer's Room:

The dealer's room at a convention is typically one of the biggest rooms there. It is a space where the vendors will set up their tables and sell merchandise to the Cosplayer's and fans alike. There are a wide variety of booths which get set up at a convention, not limited to cards, music, videos and comic books and various gadgets and do-dad's that could help complete your next cosplay costume. There may also be people signing autographs!

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E is for El Hazard:

El Hazard (The Magnificent World) is a Japanese anime franchise written by Ryoe Tsukimura, directed by Hiroki Hayashi, and produced and animated by AIC.

There is also a manga adaptation.

F is for Final Fantasy:

It could be argued that there is no other franchise that tops Final Fantasy for cosplaying. There are so many installments, so many spin-off's and so much to choose from that I would be hard pressed to find one that comes close (except perhaps Pokemon!)

Final Fantasy is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and is developed and owned by Square Enix. The series began in 1987 with the eponymous video game conceived by Sakaguchi as his last-ditch effort in the game industry; the title was a success and spawned sequels.

Although most Final Fantasy installments are supposedly independent stories with different settings and main characters, they feature identical elements that define the franchise. You may notice plot themes, character names and especially game mechanics that really tie them to each other.

I see a lot of animes and mangas making this list, but no Western franchises yet. D could have been for DC, or Doctor Who, for example. Not that I'm telling you how to make your lists, but I'll be disappointed if S doesn't stand for Star Trek or Star Wars, the fandom that pretty much kicked off cosplay as a serious hobby.

There's a lot of letters in the alphabet and a lot of things to cover for this - this is also the second go around for this particular series of features. I'm sure something will pop up. And Star Trek, as well as Star Wars, are very good suggestions and I will use them - but remember that this is only the second feature! S can also mean other things that are around in the world of Cosplay, like skit or screening, or short runner. I'm not trying to do things that are right out there in the public eye - I'm trying to find some aspects that are slightly less noted because educate means to teach something somebody may not already know.

Good point, good point. But I see a lot of people unfairly attribute cosplay to Japan as its originators, which is a misconception I find personally annoying. I appreciate your touching on the niche--I love underappreciated stuff.